Day 2: Living with Focus and Intention

posted on 3 December, 2015

Hi everyone! It’s day 2 of my journey to (hopefully) impart 13 thoughts of wisdom leading up to my birthday. The first one had to do with giving back – this one has to do with focusing and living with intention.

I’ve learned that while I can multi-task and handle anything that’s thrown my way, the willingness to do so can seriously derail the path to accomplishment. This is the usual trajectory of events:

Person, place or thing: “You should do X Y Z!”

Thinking to self: “okay, don’t say yes to X Y Z YOU CRAZY PERSON. You aren’t going to have time to prepare. You’ll have to rush across town. You’ll have to [insert some good reason as to why I shouldn’t say yes].”

Me: “Yes!”

Thinking to self: “Ugh. You suck. Let’s get ready to rumble…”

When I don’t have focus or intention guiding my decisions, I tend to do a lot of weird things. Not that it’s necessarily a BAD thing – some of the most interesting stories came out of things I probably shouldn’t have said yes to – but, I do a lot of things that may not align with my current path.

Sometimes that ends up in trouble. I can’t help it.

I’ve learned that setting focus and intention is so so so important. So I try to ask myself this now:

First, what does my gut say? Cause it’s usually right.

Does this align with some long term goal?

If it’s purely for fun, does it fall within something I’m actually passionate about? Or am I doing it to be a people pleaser/not piss off someone? (ß working on that)

Did I actually put thought into it, or just impulsively say yes for no good reason?

I think as we get older, time becomes more precious. It feels as if we don’t really have time to mess around with people, places, things or events that simply aren’t important to us or don’t enrich our lives. I’ve found that if I act with intention – meaning, I consciously make a calculated decision about how I’m going to spend my time – it alleviates stress and helps me progress in the crazy world of entrepreneurship and entertainment.

I think I’ve become a little better at wrangling this crazy attention span of mine…

How do you reign yourself in and stay focused / living with intent when you start to drift?